Welcome to Techie Tuesday here at More Cowbell! This is the day each week when I unleash my inner geek and we talk about some groovy piece of technology or a technical point of writing.

Last Techie Tuesday, we talked about my new Time-Saving Social Media BFF, Triberr. If you wondering what the heck I’m talking about, click here and read that post first.

This week were going to talk about getting into Triberr and getting set up (properly).

PRIZE ALERT: If you read last week’s post, you know I’m giving away spots in a new More Cowbell tribe specifically from the comments in these Triberr blogs. PLUS, I will give the winners a Triberr tutorial via GoToMeeting where we all talk on the phone and do a quick online session about how Triberr works.

Here’s how to enter this contest:

Comment on this post and let me know that you have contest interest

I will then add your name to the Magic Hat of Triberr Love

I will draw 3 names each time I put up a Triberr post, announcing the winners from each prior post.

Easy-peasy! The only caveat is that you must be new to Triberr to be added to the More Cowbell tribe (though you can still participate in the Webinar) – I’ll explain why in next week’s post…it has to do with something called Triberr “inbreeding.”

You will accept by clicking on the link and typing your Invite Code into the place provided. The easiest thing to do is connect with your Twitter account (when you get the message saying Triberr and Twitter need to connect to each other, just say YES).

Getting Set Up

Once you are in Triberr, there are some things you need to do to get set up. This is the area that tends to give people the most trouble. Once they’re in and their settings are good, it’s a no brainer.

If you don’t remember exactly what you did to get set up and this post looks completely unfamiliar to you (meaning you bypassed most of your settings the first time), you won’t hurt anything by printing this post and poking around.

The tech geniuses behind Triberr are on top of things. They handle issues very quickly and everything right with your Triberr-verse, even if you click on a shiny object somewhere. (In fact, since Dino monitors the web so well, I expect to see him pop over here and correct me on any points that need clarity.)

1. In the upper right side of your Triberr window, there is your picture once you’ve set up your Twitter account. To the right of your picture is an icon that looks like a screw with a drop down arrow. Click this and choose “Settings.”

2. Scroll down the page to see your settings (I don’t know why everything starts halfway down the page in Triberr but it does). Even if your screen looks empty, it isn’t. Just scroll down until you see this list of settings on the left side of your screen. (–>)

3. Choose Blog Settings and click the “Add RSS Feed” which pulls your blog into Triberr. You do this by typing in your blog URL with “/feed” on the end. (For example, mine would look like: https://jennyhansenauthor.wordpress.com/feed.)

You might need to click the Manual Import link to the right of your blog address the first time. After that, Triberr will periodically go check for your posts and will pull them into what is called the Tribal Stream. (I LOVE my Tribal Stream!!)

Twitter Settings – This lets you add Twitter accounts and set which is your main one

Content Settings – You choose how you want to receive posts and updates from others and how you want your own to work (replay is GOOD for traffic). Most importantly, you set the maximum time frequency for sharing your tribemates’ posts. Minimum frequency is every 20 minutes until the last post is tweeted. (There’s a bit more to this but this will get you started.)

Badge Settings – Triberr is a communal tool. Dino Dogan co-founded this application to be a community and amplification tool for bloggers (that’s us, More Cowbell Peeps!). Badges are about the topics you like to share – for today’s winners, that might be Travel or Writing for Nicole, Tarot for Raelyn and Books for Sheila. Your tribemates give you karma by clicking the thumbs up under your post when they dig it. This all adds to your badge karma, which you can then post proudly on your site like you would a blog award. You just “Grab the Code.” Some people love the badge, some ignore the badge…its up to you.

Navigating Around

I know some of my pals are a little techno-phobic so we are alllllmost done. (Breathe for a minute if all that talk of settings tightened your shoulders up around your ears.)

In Triberr, it’s all about swimming in the stream. Seriously…click “Home” to the left of your picture at the top of the screen and scroll down till you see a toolbar that looks like this:

Splash around a little in your three main “feed streams”:

Tribal Stream – This is all your Tribesmates’ posts (our next installment is all about what to do in your Tribal Stream).

Sent Stream – This will show you which tweets have gone out and how many hits they garnered for your Tribe. You can also “replay” posts from here to tweet them again.

My Posts – These are all of YOUR posts that your Tribies have tweeted and you can see how many hits they’ve gotten you.

Those are some super-fun streams to splash in, no? We’re going to talk A LOT more about them next week, but I want y’all to get set up and play around a bit first. If you simply cannot wait until next week or your brain will explode, here is Solitary Mama’s post on How To Kick Ass On Triberr (or at least work it right). If you click the last link and love it, thank Myndi Shafer…she found it. 🙂

Finding Help

In Triberr, when you need help or want to learn more, you “send up a bonfire.” (How cute is that?) You click on Bonfires in your main toolbar and look on the left sidebar to narrow down your topic. Some examples are “Find Tribes/Tribesmates” or “Technical Support.”

In each of these bonfire areas, you run a search to see if someone already discussed your topic or question. If they did, you leave a comment there. If you don’t see your issue covered, you start a new bonfire. The Triberr Gods Dino and Dan come help you.

If you’ve never been to the bonfires, you might want to dance on through…make some s’mores, pick some people’s brains. It’s nifty over there. They might even give you a grass skirt and… Never mind.

To recap why I Heart Triberr:
TONS of social media, done in 10-20 minutes per day.
All the people whose posts you read and share in ONE screen. *Rapture!*

What kinds of questions do you have now that some of you have joined some tribes? Am I going too fast or too slow with these posts? Have you found any other social media time-savers we need to know about? Enquiring minds always want to know these things here at More Cowbell!

83 Responses to Triberr Part 2: How Do I Splash In The Triberr Kiddie Pool?

Hi there – beginning to make sense -one thing not sure of – if one runs more than one blog can they all be connected (does it collect from one’s own twitter feed or straight from a blog feed? why do I always feel i’m asking dumb questions:)

Hey, Jenny, great post! I’m just getting the hang of Triberr, and I love it! The one thing I can’t seem to do is change my profile pic. Even though I changed my Twitter pic, it didn’t update on Triberr, and I’ve been looking around in the settings and not finding a button for that, either manually or automatically via Twitter.

Kathy, I’m hoping Dino sees this because I don’t know how to do it either. If you refreshed your Twitter account, I’d think it would pull in your Twitter pic. I love your old photo AND your new one, but I understand that you’d like them to match.

Thank you so much for explaining the Karma points and the thumbs up icon under posts. I was clicking that because I had no idea what it means. Two questions I have are 1. How can we add hashtags to the tweet that is sent out when we click approve? and 2. Where do the quality scores come from? Who decides what is quality and what isn’t? Ok, obviously I want to enter to be in the phone call session. You rock!

LOL…well you’ll be giving karma out all over the place now (which is nice because you get Triberr currency back in the form of Bones for doing so). To answer your questions:

1. If you click on the black screw looking thing over the approve button, it will open an update screen below the post name where you can add hashtags and comments. I’m going to talk about this in depth next week. Click update and then approve the post.

2. I believe the thumbs up also creates the per post quality score, but this is a GREAT question. We’ll ask Dino. 🙂

Triberr looks like a fine way to meet others like me. I’ve got a deep seated need to communicate with others who write. Is there a way I can wade in the pool and find a tribe? As usual, you’re a fountain of knowledge.

One thing, hot off the press – I just found out that Triberr opened so if I don’t draw your name, you’ll still be able to get in there and poke around. I plan to announce this in next Tuesday’s post as well.

Is there a limit to the number of people in your tribe? I remember there’s a limit of how many tribes (4, right?) but do those tribes have unlimited numbers? If you covered this in the last post, I’m sorry. I have brain overload lately, and nothing seems to stick! I love the idea of read and share on one screen. It takes so long clicking through everything.

Great question, Lara. My starting tribe amount was 4 but I wonder if I can increase that with a purchase of more Bones (the currency on Triberr) – I haven’t found this out yet, but I will. The default tribes look like they’re in the 10-ish range, but again, you can buy more bones for very cheap if you want more. I have enough bones to expand but I’m hoarding them for when I know the answers.

Thanks for breaking this down into manageable bites Jenny. I’m one of the extremely techno-challenged/phobic. I’m not diving into the Triberr pool yet. I’m going to look around some more and watch the video from your last post.

You’re describing it very well, Jenny! *shaking a cowbell for applause* I am still navigating some areas, but once set up, it is very easy to tweet tribe members’ posts. I like that the pop-up window allows adding hashtags and comments with the tweet. Never knew what karma was before, so thanks for clarifying that! Keep up the Techie Tuesdays. This is great stuff!

This makes it a lot more clear. I think I’ll try the post you linked to, don’t think I can wait til next week for more. You do a great job training us all in things unfamiliar…hm, guess that’s why you’re a trainer at work. 🙂

I set my time interval to a minimum of 30 mins. No one can possibly get annoyed by that one. Also, I manage tweets from my phone so when someone engages me, I can chat. I agree that if someone never chats, i think they’re missing the point of Twitter, but Triberr doesn’t really affect that.

All Triberr is for is to have a single place to share the posts of the people you were going to share anyway. It doesn’t mean you’ll never share anyone else’s posts, just that it’s easier to share the posts of your pals. 🙂

Awesome post, Jenny, and double awesome that you drew my name for a place in your new tribe. I’m feeling warm and fuzzy and considering it’s -30 in my part of Canada, I can use all the warmth and fuzziness I can get today. 🙂

Hi, Jenny! Knee deep in NEW social media, but I did request to be added to your “tribe.” Did you not make it through all of the Cowbells, or do you (gasp!) fear novellas disguised as comments on Triberr?

Triberr consolidates the sharing of people you know. It doesn’t do a thing for those in the Twitter stream that you don’t know. However, you are leveraging the networks of your online pals in a way you weren’t previously by making it easy to share things. This is the WANA plan in action and I expect to see you set up a WANA112 tribe. 🙂

Yep! I spend more time coming back and reading the ones I want but I don’t have to spend all that time clicking on each blog just to add it to Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ or StumbleUpon. I like to support my peeps by pushing them up to at least one of those places, if not two. Triberr has solved this issue for me.

Hi Jenny. Cowbell is a lot of fun and the info on Triberr is excellent. Do you know if we should “lobby” the person you mentioned might set up a #WANA112 Tribe? Don’t want to pester someone but that would be cool, unless the point is to connect with a whole new set of people? A minor comment on improving your blog: the writing and personality is top notch but I would hire an art director to give it a more visual look in keeping with the great job you’re doing. You know how great Myndi Shafer’s profile image is? Something that has that kind of visual pop. Just a thought.

Thank you for this Triberr series! (And of course I am interested in the contest.) I have followed all your instructions and have now set up my Triberr account but how am I supposed to form a tribe or join one? Or connect with people? The white screen in front of me is daunting.

Jenny, I must be missing something. I click home and then I have the blue bar at the top with my name. I click on Triberr stream and I can see what has been shared. What am i supposed to do? How do I become friends with people? I can click and comment on their tweet but I don’t know how to become their tribemate.

Haley, you go to the bonfires to find new tribes/tribemates. You want to look for groups where you would be comfortable tweeting EVERYONE in the group. You can run searches on the left sidebar of the Bonfires screen. You get to Bonfires by clicking on the word at the very top in your toolbar. Let me know how it goes – I plan to talk about setting up tribes in a later post. 🙂